Messaging systems such as computer telephony messaging, unified messaging and unified communication systems are used in order to manage different types of messages that may be sent to a particular user. An example of such a system is the CallPilot™ desktop unified messaging communication system by Nortel Networks™. The messages in such a system may be voice, facsimile, electronic mail, video or data messages. The complex relationships between various competing messages and the client expectations associated therewith require an efficient management of a number of different message types which may arrive simultaneously. For instance, in some situations it is often desirable to initiate immediate response on certain incoming messages while others may not require immediate response. These types of situations may arise in such places as hospital emergency rooms, stock brokerage firms, air traffic control centers, shipping and receiving areas, etc.
In prior art systems, a telephone system may present a list of notifications of messages that are waiting for a particular user. Many such systems incorporate notifications of messages sent to the user over a system other than the telephone system, such as an electronic mail system. The user can clear the system-provided notifications individually or all at once. Such messaging systems, however, offer either no access or limited access to the messages themselves.
Many of the existing systems tend to focus on either voice message or electronic mail management, but generally not both. These systems generally sort messages into a variety of categories based on their status, such as “old”, “saved”, “read” or “new”. The “new” messages are continually presented to the user in the message list until the user chooses to deal with them. Moreover, it is sometimes necessary to retrieve a set of messages in their entirety in order to simply verify if a particularly important message has been received. As such, these systems tend to be focused on managing all of the messages that may be contained in a user's mailbox, which is not convenient for situations mentioned earlier where immediate action on certain incoming messages is necessary. Furthermore, such existing systems do not well integrate e-mail, voice mail, and calls with no message attached.